Lost the lot, for no obvious reason :/
Everything in my tank has died off and I’m really hoping someone might be able to help me figure out why.
I set this tank up a couple of months ago (there’s a previous post with pics), and once it had cycled I added a dozen Bloody Mary shrimp. Lost a couple in the first few days, but the rest were fine—even had a couple of visible and healthy moults once they’d settled in.
A couple of weeks later I bought two ramshorn snails from a reputable LFS, but they died within 48hrs of each other a week or so later. Not before laying eggs, tho—I’ve now got tiny baby snails making themselves at home in the tank.
About a week ago, three shrimp died without warning. No signs of disease, they just lost the ability to stay upright just before they died (happened really fast).
Parameters were checked at this point:
ph - 7.5
NO3 - 0
NO2 - 0
KH - 6
GH - 8
Two days ago I woke up to five more deaths. One of them had looked suspiciously like having the white ring of death on it the day before, so I checked parameters again and everything was exactly the same as before - nothing at all to indicate a problem.
This left me with two sole survivors. One of them was berried, so I did a roughly 40% water change using Seachem Prime in the hope it would help and just crossed everything that she’d keep going long enough for me to at least have some replacement babies. It wasn’t to be - this morning I found both remaining shrimp dead in the tank. Again, no sign of disease, just gone.
I currently still have snail babies wandering around in there, so assume it’s unlikely to be anything that’s affecting the water itself. The only thing I’d noticed is new mould on a piece of driftwood and also on the leaves of a buce (see pics—apols for terrible quality), but I don’t know enough to know if that might be an issue.
Substrate is potting compost with a sand and gravel cap, and the endless plants in there are growing well (although surface plants don’t seem to like it for some reason, not sure if that’s relevant). I’m happy to break it down and remove the substrate if that might be the issue (most of the plants are floaters or epiphytes so can be transferred easily).
I obviously want to restart a shrimp colony at some point, but am loathe to do so until I’ve figured out what went wrong. And I’m feeling pretty crap as a failed shrimp momma!
Any ideas?